Is Mass Murder Exceptionally American?

ByClayton Cramer |November 16, 2017

Makeshift memorial at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC to victims of the June 2015 mass shooting that left nine dead. Photo by Zack Carlson via Flickr

The recent tragedies in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, are causing many Americans to wonder, “Is this kind of mass murder peculiarly American?”

The facts suggest otherwise.

There is nothing exceptionally American about mass murder or even firearms mass murder —even though some of the rhetoric accompanying these tragic events portrays the U.S. as singularly plagued by them.

For starters: the FBI defines mass murder as four or more dead (including the killer) in one event, in one location. [FBI, Serial Murder: Multidisciplinary Perspectives for Investigators, 8]

Of course, we are excluding the genocidal mass murders that largely define the 20th Century (for example, the Turkish extermination of the Armenians; the Holocaust; Rwanda; among far too many).

The types of mass murder referred to here are crimes not committed by or with the acquiescence of governments.

Former President Barack Obama, for example, declared after the 2015 shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine people dead and three injured “this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

He went on to say, “It does not happen with this kind of frequency.”

The implication was that the U.S.’s relatively laissez faire approach to gun control is at fault.

According to Politifact, the first sentence was incorrect, noting that between 2000 and 2014 there were 23 incidents of mass shootings in ten other countries besides the United States; though, it added, the second sentence was “not quite as wrong as the first claim.”

The more commonly accepted measure of crime is events per 100,000 population or dead per 100,000. Even then, the U.S. is only fourth on the list of mass-murder deaths per 100,000 people (0.15) compared to #3, Finland (0.34), #2, Norway (1.3), and #1, Switzerland (1.7).

Mass murders (as well as the far common ordinary murders) are disproportionately committed by persons with severe mental illness problems, whose actions are clearly a consequence of those problems—and the U.S. is not alone in suffering from the consequences of their actions, whether they involve firearms or not.

Some are acts of terrorism. A few fit no existing pattern. The recent mass murder in Las Vegas, for example, seems to be a Black Swan crime: a multimillionaire who engaged in meticulous planning with devastating loss of life (although lower than at least fourotherU.S.mass murders in the last three decades).

Eight terrorist mass murder attacks in Paris in 2016 resulted in 130 deaths, although only four of the incidents qualify as mass murders (15 dead at Le Carillion and Le Petit Cambodge restaurants, with firearms; five dead at Café Bonne Biere; 90 dead at the Bataclan concert hall, from firearms and grenades).

For many people, it is a surprise to find out that there are many mass murders committed with weapons other than firearms.

16 thoughts on “Is Mass Murder Exceptionally American?”

The use of rates per 100,000 population is very misleading in this instance. In the Politico reference used to make the author’s point, it shows that from 2000-2014 Finland had 2 mass shootings, Norway and Switzerland 1 while the US had 133 with 487 killed and 505 wounded. America’s problem with mass shootings and homicides in general is an enormous problem that requires a more thoughtful national response.

Clayton, intuitively, I’m inclined to agree that the core cause is lack of a comprehensive mental-health screening system and lack of mental hospital space to hold those discovered. Nevertheless, you didn’t address the point of small countries with 1 or 2 incidents. I think that point deserves to be addressed somehow.

Suppose you had world consisting of one large country (US) and innumerable city-states (Vatican City, Singapore and the like). They have varying cultures and other circumstances. By pure chance, these city-states would have occasional incidents (mass murders in point here). The smaller the city-state the larger the rate per 100,000.

We would like to say “Hahah! Many of these city-states have a rate/100k higher than that of the US!” And, it might be true; it might be culturally based, or something else. But, it’s just as likely to be a quirk in the fact that with a large number of tiny samples (city-states) statistics dictate that there are bound to be a few outliers that appear to be high rates of the incident.

I’m not sure how – statistically – to deal with these cases. Possibly to artificially group countries with small populations until we have a group size that is much less susceptible to the troublesome phenomena. E.g., a “European Union of small European Countries”, an EU of a couple of big European Countries, an African union of Sub-Saharan Countries, an Asian Union of Small Countries, etc.

If the phenomena of several mass-killings per 100,000 population still manifests after such an artificial aggregation then we can reach the same conclusion. All countries and cultures are vulnerable, and there is no support for a correlation with guns.

per 100, 000 is used for comparison because of ease of numbers.
but the number itself it irrelevant.
it is all about percentages of population.
which does not change regardless of the number of people.

“They have varying cultures and other circumstances. ” Yup. America has a serious problem of murder in a few neighborhoods where young black men with long criminal histories murder other young black men with similar long criminal histories. Much of America has European levels of murder rates.

Setting the standard at 4 or more dead (including the shooter) seems pretty low to define a “mass murder”. That threshold would seem to include any drug deal gone wrong. Also, one argument I commonly hear is that guns allow mass murders to be much more devastating than those committed with knives, vehicles, or blunt objects. I wonder how the statistics would compare if the threshold were raised, say to 10, 15, or 20 dead. Any insight on that?

Not knowing the reasoning ( if any ) behind the standard of 4 deaths, the cynic in me strongly suspects that it is intended to allow the inclusion of many gang/drug related shootings to inflate the numbers for political effect. Much the same as how the point is made that so many victims “know” their attacker without regard to the actual relationship, creating the impression that family and friends are primarily responsible.

I notice that the actual rate numbers for the US and countries that have even worse rates than us aren’t sourced; and, more to the point, one of my friends immediately challenged that point when I shared the article on Facebook :-). Since I’m hoping you have the answer in your hip pocket, I’m asking before I try to dig them up myself — what’s the source on those numbers (the particular concern was how comparable they were)?

Clayton, another historical arson case here in Australia was the Whiskey Au Go-Go blaze in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in March ’73, killing 15 nightclub patrons. Two blokes were gaoled for the murders.

The worst arson mass-murder of recent years is likely the 2011 Monterrey, Mexico casino attack?

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